Clean Clothes

I WENT TO THE LAUNDRETTE TODAY ~ at long last. The trip was over 2 months overdue. I've been handwashing and wearing out my dwindling supply of clean clothes for the longest possible time. I trudged my huge tartan bag all the way there, loaded it in the £3 machine quick enough to avoid the uptight assistant who seems to take great joy in telling me I'm overloading the machine. Piled the stuff in. Door shut money in and... It wouldn't start. The surly assistant had to shimmy over and press the door in for ten seconds. With my clothes safely whirlig round I went outside for a cyder and a fag.

Instead of taking my clothes home wet, like I used to when I spent every spare penny on heroin, I actually paid £2.50 to dry them.

I've been in a much better mood since yesterday's outing and encounter with the tiny tits and sparrows down the park.

I had a psychic interlude yesterday that made my head go a peculiar. I felt ill when I posted last night. As I said, I felt like I'd been abusing crack (though I haven't touched crack in a long time). When I did eventually get to sleep, I had vivid dreams about bursting through think ice at the top of the world and falling down from my old school through a crack in reality to the North Pole. I had incredibly vivid dreams until I woke up four hours later at 8am. I didn't want to get up that early. It's Money Monday. I used to get up first thing when I got paid, so I could take my money straight to the heroin dealer. I don't want to be on heroin anymore...

... But I screwed that one up by hitting up £20 in the morning and then another £15 this afternoon. I decided I really need Narcotics Anonymous.

My travels through the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book have taught me that I'm full of what they call "Resentment". In my recent bad mood I've felt resentment regarding just about every aspect of life. I think NA would say this is the bitterness of the addict who's unwilling to live life on life's terms. My thoughts have been full of anger that the one substance that makes me feel OK is not freely on sale from every corner pharmacy. I'm angry at having given in and opted to stick to prescribed oral methadone therapy. As I just might have mentioned before, I loathe being on methadone.

I feel I have cause to feel unhappy about this: medical officials like to say that methadone brings stability to the chaotic lives of addicts. Far from bringing stability, methadone brought me insanity. I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder when I was on methadone. Surely you need to be pretty UNstable and far gone to warrant that label..?

Here's another point where my experience is at odds with NA's philosophy. NA call active addiction "insanity". But I found madness on methadone therapy, trying to go clean! Though I was unwilling to admit it at the time, my heroin use was a type of self-medication. To me, my drug of choice was a mood stabilizer and antipsychotic ~ and it worked. Opiates do have recognized antipsychotic effects; it's just taboo for the mainstream medical establishment to recognize this fact.

So anyway I've been drowning in this bitterness, which you could label a symptom of depression, or a feature of my drug-addiction. Or both.

Tonight I don't feel bitter at all. Tonight I feel pretty much OK... then I remember I'm stoked up on £35 worth of gear. Maybe I won't feel as good as this tomorrow... who knows? Tomorrow I've decided to go back to NA.

I could have gone to NA tonight, but I found myself trudging back from the carpark where I met my second dealer and hanging outside the venue for tonight's meeting in the rain half an hour before opening, thinking "I've got gear on me, and the meeting won't be over for two hours..." So I took the bus home and decided to leave NA until tomorrow when I'm clean. Tuesday night's meeting is the one I ran out of last time because the room was too crowded with people smelling of bodily secretions.

My life has to hit a turning point sooner or later; only I can do the manoevring to turn it around. I decided I wanted a better life, if I can have one. Problem was, I was depressed enough not to see any future at all. I've decided endless times to push through, "doing the right thing" no matter how bad I feel... But these resolutions were invariably made when I was high on gear. Once the gear had faded and I had only methadone holding me, depression had me powerless in its grip once more and I was too weak, too paralysed, to move on anywhere further than my drug dealer's.

I had a lot of Resentment against NA for having been treated as if I was high on drugs, when I was high on my manic episode. Of course anybody who turns up at an antidrugs meeting hyped up, agitated and very wiry is going to make people think they've been using. That was not the issue. I'm upset with NA because I made it abundantly clear that I was NOT using, yet I still got a slew of comments about "once you drop the drugs..." etc etc.

I hadn't been listened to, hadn't been believed.

I came to NA expecting to find understanding and acceptance. But I don't feel understood, and I feel rejected by them, because THEY could not accept the truth. I brought up NA at a dual diagnosis Nutter Club meeting I used to go to (before it got closed down). Nobody else from Nutter Club ever went to NA. There was one woman who was so depressed the first time I met her that she'd been sitting down the park at midnight thinking it was midday. She had been told she felt that way because she "wasn't working the steps". Another person had been advised to stop taking his schizophrenia medication as it was "using". I caused uproarious laughter by declaring if anyone from NA told me to stop taking my meds, I'd retort "yeah: as long as I come off it in your house". Naomi thought that was hilarious.

NA have definite shortcomings around the mental health issue and the more I pondered them, the angrier I got. In the end I told myself you just have to accept a group like NA for what they are and what they do. They do Recovery very well. Recovery and "learning to live life on life's terms". NA members describe themselves as "clean and serene" and it's their serenity I'm after. They say "if you want what we have..." and I do want it. So I decided I would be wise not to chuck out the baby with the bathwater. And besides, I don't like harbouring resentments.

I'm just annoyed that a "normal" person is allowed to come in and describe their depression or their anxiety, their mood swings or their anger at life. But my mood swings are too "psychiatric", too extreme, to be acceptable to a group like NA. If I were to talk about them in any detail I know I'll be labelled a nutter and subtly pushed away.

If I can't be accepted for who I am, I don't know that I could ever be happy there...

Well I'm still going tomorrow... so I'll let ya know how I get on...


HEROIN AND PSYCHOSIS
Severe dependence on cannabis and psychostimulants is associated with a higher risk of psychosis and is in contrast to severe dependence on heroin, which has a negative relationship with psychosis.
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/181/5/393



illustrated: a tiny tit like the ones in my local park ~~~~~~~~ this one's a blue tit; great tits are slightly bigger (like colourful tubby sparrows)